Tag Archives: electrosensitivity

In March 1976, the US Defense Intelligence Agency published an astounding report titled “Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation (Radiowaves and Microwaves) – Eurasian Communist Countries.” The 34-page report analyzes numerous Soviet and Eastern bloc research studies that demonstrate a wide range of adverse biological effects caused by exposure to radio frequency radiation and microwaves. In its Summary on page vii, the report states:

“If the more advanced nations of the West are strict in the enforcement of stringent exposure standards, there could be unfavorable effects on industrial output and military functions.”

The above statement and the entire report quite clearly reveal what the government knew and when it knew it. This also reveals WHY Western governments have subsequently been unwilling to acknowledge the bio-toxic effects of wireless systems or the legitimacy of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), and why “safe limits” of exposure have been raised in subsequent years when, in fact, they need to be lowered.

Radio host Pat Rullo of Boil the Frog Slowly interviews me for one hour about the risks of smart meters, wireless radiation, school Wi-Fi, and the growing quest for EMF-free sanctuaries around the globe on her radio show “Boil the Frog Slowly”. You’ll also find out what the word ‘refugium’ means to biologists. Interview begins 8.5 minutes in:

Eight-year-old Tyler Hoffmann has energy to burn. And his backyard trampoline, bike, basketball, and hockey stick each get a thorough workout on the afternoon I visit him at his grandmother’s home near Victoria, BC.

But in April 2012, a different story was unfolding. Tyler began coming home from Sangster Elementary School in the Sooke School District with extreme headaches and fatigue. And he was having trouble sleeping at night.

When asked to touch the part of his head that hurt, he would point to the top, his mother Lori recalls. But as the headaches grew worse over the next few weeks—to the point of nausea—Tyler was no longer able to touch the source of it, stating it was now in the middle of his head.

“After a few weeks of using Advil and Tylenol to alleviate the severe pain in Tyler’s head, we knew something was seriously wrong,” Lori says.

The following month, she discovered what it was.

“We accidently discovered, through another parent, that the school district had just finished installing commercial wi-fi networks throughout every school,” Lori explains. “This was done without informing parents. We were denied any opportunity for input,” she adds.

Tyler’s pediatrician recommended that the school shut off the wi-fi router closest to Tyler’s classroom, so that Tyler could remain in school and complete Grade 2 with his friends.

The school’s wi-fi routers, all active and transmitting day and night, were not being used at the time (and still aren’t) because there were no computers to connect them to. So the request from a doctor to turn off a single unused router seemed simple enough, Lori thought. The Sooke School District did not agree.

School District usurps parental choice on wireless radiation

“The Assistant Superintendent told us that the router would not be turned off but would stay on 24/7 because they did not want to set a precedent,” Lori recalls. “I don’t have a cell phone, wireless router, cordless phone, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse or any other wireless devices in my home because I have made the choice of not exposing my children or myself to microwave radiation. The school district has now decided for me that Tyler will be exposed to it,” she says.

Lori pulled Tyler out of school that same day rather than risk his health any further. And upon doing so, she was promptly informed by the school principal that Tyler’s teacher was under no obligation to give Tyler homework, marking, or evaluation so that he could complete Grade 2.

In September 2012, his mother enrolled Tyler in an elementary school in the neighboring Victoria School District, where there would be no wi-fi router in his classroom.

Free from the toxic effects of commercial wi-fi in the classroom, Tyler performed at the top of his math and reading classes at his new school.

Tyler Hoffmann (Photo by Janis Hoffmann)

But transferring Tyler to an out-of-district school is, at best, a temporary solution, and does nothing to help the 8,500 other students in the Sooke School District. So Tyler’s family along withthe Jeskes (another local family with electrosensitive children) have launched a legal challenge in an attempt to make Sooke School District classrooms safe for all children. Read their legal brief here.

The Hoffmann and Jeske families seek, at the very least, to bring the Sooke School District into compliance with the policies adopted in 2012 by the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, which call for a moratoriumon installation of further wi-fi in BC schools plus a minimum of one school at each level in each district to be free of wi-fi to accommodate electrosensitive students.

“unlawful to experiment on children”

“It is unethical and unlawful to experiment on children,” says Tyler’s grandmother Janis Hoffmann. “Wi-fi is an unregulated technology that has not been tested for safety for children in schools,” she adds. “Parents have not been informed of the risks and have never been asked to sign a consent form. Ironically, the student field trips are explained in great detail, requiring parents to sign a permission slip before children are permitted to attend.”

Tyler and his five-year-old sister Julianna will each attend school in the Victoria School District in September 2013 where they will not be exposed to wireless radiation from commercial wi-fi routers in their classrooms.

To donate to the legal fund for electrosensitive children sickened by wi-fi in schools, go here.

With sketchpad in hand, Jordan Weiss walks out his back door and perches on a rocky bluff overlooking the Juan de Fuca Strait and the forested shores of the Olympic Peninsula beyond. The only sound as he works is the occasional rustle of dry grass and the shushing of his pencil across the pad.

For many, the tranquil and unhurried life here in rural East Sooke on southern Vancouver Island would be a dream come true. But for a teenager who is here by necessity, this paradise can also be a prison.

The reason for Jordan’s isolation is his extreme sensitivity to wireless radiation. Exposure to wi-fi, cell towers, and even cell phones causes a range of physical maladies for Jordan as well as horrifying “night terrors”—a form of sleep-walking that can result in serious injury, and has on more than one occasion.

In 2012, Jordan’s parents uprooted the family from their Cadboro Bay neighbourhood near University of Victoria and purchased the remote house and 3-acre parcel in East Sooke in a desperate bid to escape wireless radiation and give Jordan a chance to live a healthy life. (Jordan’s mother is also electrosensitive, but his father and older brother are not.)

After much looking at rural properties within commuting distance of Victoria where both parents still work, the family found an area in East Sooke that, because of landscape configuration, offered little or no cell phone reception. A handful of houses are located on that strip of land. One of those houses was for sale.

(Interestingly, another of these properties belongs to a building biologist who bought there for the same reason—to reduce exposure to ambient wireless radiation. At the rate electrosensitivity is increasing in the population, one can only wonder how many years it will be before “No cell phone reception” becomes a coveted selling feature for real estate.)

“Moving out here is not the complete answer,” Jordan tells me. “It’s a good start. But, as a teenager, I still can’t go out there and do the stuff I want to do.”

Most teenage activities are in wi-fi’ed locations—whether it’s a café, school, rec centre, or private home. Nor are teenagers inclined to turn off their cell phones when asked.

“They make fun of me,” Jordan says of his attempts to ask friends to shut off their phones. “They don’t want to say it, but they think it’s all in my head. I want to be around people who love me for who I am and are not always on their cell phones.”

Jordan’s electrosensitivity first manifest when he was 11, soon after he got orthodontic braces. (This is an increasingly common scenario for many electrosensitive children due to wi-fi in schools. Metal dental braces literally become an antenna, drawing ambient radiation into a child’s head.) Jordan began experiencing blistering headaches, nausea, clumsiness, weak legs, inability to focus or retain information, and severe exhaustion.

His mother Karen believes the underlying trigger for Jordan’s electrosensitivity may reach as far back as pre-school when his daycare for two years of his life was across the street from a cell tower.

Jordan’s symptoms swelled to crisis proportions when the family renovated their former home and installed wi-fi and cordless DECT 6.0 phones throughout, including beside Jordan’s bed. He felt awful at friends’ homes with wi-fi, and felt great when sleeping over at friends’ homes without wi-fi.

After much research, investigation, and visits to doctors and sleep clinics, Jordan’s parents finally identified the cause of his problems: wireless radiation. They removed the wi-fi and cordless phones from their home, and Jordan immediately improved—at least for his hours spent at home.

“It’s like being allergic to society.”

“When we first figured out what was wrong, we were relieved,” Jordan’s mother Karen recalls. “At last we had an answer. But then we thought about what it means—it’s like being allergic to society.”

The move to East Sooke has virtually put an end to the harrowing and dangerous night terrors. Yet every foray out into the world to attend an art class or social gathering or a meeting of the local mountain bike club risks a re-appearance of symptoms due to ubiquitous wireless radiation.

“It is really a life-altering issue that adds an entirely new dimension to almost every decision Jordan makes,” Karen says.

Jordan is a young man of many talents. He cooks us a scrumptious omelette made with his special sauce, then sits on the sofa and plays the Djembe (an African drum) with gusto. He tells me he would someday like to create graphic novels and design video games. A display case in the hall holds an impressive sampling of his sculptural works and other art.

Yet with electrosensitivity dictating where he can and cannot go, limiting his training opportunities as well as social interaction and future workplaces, Jordan faces more challenges than most young people in discovering his path through this world and how to ply his talents in it.

In earlier years, he had wanted to be an architect. But now, the prospect of spending years at university—awash as they all are in wi-fi, cell towers, cell phones, iPads, laptops, and myriad other wireless devices—seems out of reach.

Last winter, Jordan was training to be a ski instructor at Mount Washington on Vancouver Island. But the presence of a cell tower, plus the radios they all had to carry, nixed that plan.

Most people, if asked to describe their ideal life, would talk about getting a piece of land, or finding that special someone, or having the time and money to write novels, or just kicking back in a thatched palapa on a tropical beach.

When I ask Jordan what his ideal life would be, he immediately replies: “A life without pain or sickness.”

And to a large degree, that is what he now has at his new home in East Sooke. His special refuge is rugged East Sooke Park, located just below his home. He visits it frequently with his Australian shepherd, Keisha.

“I have always been drawn to flowing water,” Jordan tells me. “There’s one spot I hike to at East Sooke Park with Keisha—it’s overlooking a chasm. There’s water crashing all around me, and I just lie there until Keisha wanders off and I have to go get her.”

But you’re not out of the woods yet. The handsets for corded phones (and no doubt cordless phones too) emit a massive magnetic field from the earpiece—yes, that thing pressed against your skull for hours at a time.

Bottom line, for those who don’t want to read to the end: Use the speakerphone function on your corded phone. Keep the handset away from your skull.

I had begun to get suspicious about telephone handsets after several electrosensitive people I have been interviewing for my Refugium projecttold me they can only use a phone (corded, of course) for a few minutes at a time, or they can only use it on speakerphone.

I had also been trying to suss out why my own right ear has been chronically blocked for years and now starts heating up and ringing when I am on the computer for extended periods of time.

I have never owned and rarely used any wireless devices in my life. So I began asking myself: Could the handset for my corded phones (I have 4, one for each room) be affecting that ear?

Last night I whipped out my trusty ME 3030B analyzerfrom Gigaherz Solutions in Germany, and my jaw dropped at what I discovered.

I set the meter to magnetic field mode, and placed it to the earpiece of my primary phone (which has a power cord, transformer and onboard electronics including call display, answer machine, and speakerphone). The magnetic field reading was fluctuating wildly and continuously from 250-1,300 nT. (That’s 2.5-13 mG. To convert from nanotesla to milligauss, divide by 100.)

Safe is anything under 30 nT !

My cheaper corded phones with no power cord but just a single line to a phone jack were emitting magnetic fields from the earpiece ranging from 215-600 nT.

What do these numbers mean?

The 2008 Building Biology Evaluation Guidelinesdocument classifies a magnetic field of 100-500 nT (1-5 mG) as being a “Severe Concern” in a sleeping area. And more than one electrician and building biologist has told me there should be no areas of your home above 30 nT (0.3 mG).

So I had to ask myself: How good can it be to have that massive magnetic field clamped on my skull every day? And yes, it was usually clamped on my right ear—and for decades now.

The good thing about magnetic fields is that they drop off very quickly with distance. Even a few inches can make a difference. I detected absolutely NO additional magnetic field above the ambient room level of 24 nT when I moved the meter just a few inches down the handset to measure the mouthpiece instead of the earpiece. And more importantly, I measured no additional magnetic field at the point of my body when I am seated at the desk and using the speakerphone function of my phone.

I can only assume that there is a power transformer located in the earpiece speaker of every telephone handset, because transformers are the main generators of magnetic fields in home appliances and electronics.

The external transformer (black box) on the power cord for my primary phone generates an enormous magnetic field where it plugs into the wall (about 1,500 nT, but sometimes maxing out the meter beyond 1,999 nT). However, that field has disappeared by the time I move 6 feet away to where I am seated while using the phone.

In fact, the magnetic field at my seat while I am using the phone on speakerphone is just 24 nT, which is perfectly acceptable.

(Sidebar: Do not sleep or sit anywhere near those black box power transformers you plug into the wall for various devices in your home. Position yourself at least 3-6 feet from plugged-in transformers – even if there is a wall separating you from the transformer.)

The $620 I spent two years ago (including tax and shipping) on my two Gigaherz Solutions meters (the ME 3030Bfor electrical and magnetic fields, and the HF 35Cfor measuring RF/wireless emissions), has probably been the best money I have ever spent. I have located and reduced many sources of electromagnetic radiation in my home and life, thanks to those meters. Read my article “How Hot is Your Bedroom?”

Media Release – April 17, 2013

Nanaimo author Kim Goldberg has been awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to write a book about people who are physically sickened by their exposure to wireless technology.

“I was thrilled to learn that this project will be supported,” says Goldberg, who holds a degree in biology and has no wireless devices in her own home. “It will require a huge amount of time and work because the problem is literally global in scope.”

Goldberg says people are already contacting her with their stories of debilitating illness, job loss, critically sick children in Wi-Fi’ed classrooms, relocation to remote settings, sleeping in homemade Faraday cages—all due to their exposure to some form of electromagnetic radiation, usually wireless.

“Where do you go when an invisible matrix spanning the globe is making you sick?” Goldberg asks.

“I have been shocked by the number and intensity of the stories flooding in to me. We seem to be witnessing a growing electroplague,” she says. “I think these electro-sensitive people, and the special sanctuaries cropping up around the world to keep them safe, may be harbingers of a future we are all hurtling toward.”

Goldberg maintains that Canada and the United States lag far behind Europe in recognizing the risks and protecting the public from constant exposure to wireless transmissions from cell phones and towers, Internet Wi-Fi and other sources.

“In England, many people afflicted with electro-sensitivity were first diagnosed by their own doctors,” says Goldberg. “Here in Canada, you would be hard-pressed to find a doctor who even believes electro-sensitivity is medically valid, let alone knows how to diagnose it.”

Goldberg has written extensively on environmental topics for newspapers and magazines in Canada and abroad. She is the author of four nonfiction books and two collections of poetry.

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re·fu·gi·um—An area that has escaped changes occurring elsewhere, thereby providing suitable habitat in which organisms can survive through a period of unfavorable conditions. [from Latin refugium, from refugere to flee away, from re- + fugere to escape]

Kim Goldberg is an award-winning writer in Nanaimo, British Columbia. She is the author of six books and more than 2,000 articles. Kim holds a degree in Biology from University of Oregon and is an avid birdwatcher and nature lover. Read more about Kim here. Email: goldberg@ncf.ca